Orchards Under the Taurus New Moon

On the changing scenery of our lives and the gifts of this New Moon in Taurus, May 2023

One of my favourite astrologers interprets the energy of the Taurus season as that of an orchard.

If you’ve worked on an orchard, or simply walked through one, you know the immense effort in working the soil, planting, trimming and harvesting.
Perhaps you’ve enjoyed walking along and picking fresh fruit right off the trees, inhaled nature’s absolute abundance, and bit into fruit with child-like glee and satisfaction.
And yet, like in any farming, a massive piece of this work is not under our control - neither the timing, nor the weather, nor the harvest itself.

The fullness of all this, is what comes to mind more prominently for me in this Taurus season - the work, the effort, the delight, the things outside our control and the unknown. This isn’t abstract and galactic, but rather it feels material, tangible and present right now.

We are almost at the end of Taurus season - when the Sun is in this Earthly zodiac sign - about to enter the Air sign of Gemini (on May 21st). This week, the Moon joins the Sun in Taurus and because of how light and shadow works, this joining gives us the New Moon in Taurus which falls around May 18th, 2023.

Cherry Orchard Photo by Pascal Debrunner on Unsplash

With this New Moon energy, one of the things that caught my attention was the degree of the Moon.

Astrology is all about angles, and each house of the zodiac holds a 30° space in our sky. With 12 zodiac signs, that gives us the 360° of the zodiac wheel.

Image from The Mantra Collective

This Taurus New Moon occurs at 28°, so almost at the end of the season.

This is a little new for us, because we’ve just come out of a cycle of eclipses, which tend to shuffle around the geometry angles and as such, the relationship of the Moon, Earth and Sun.

So, as this New Moon casts it’s shadow-light upon the orchard of our life, towards the end of Taurus season, things may seem and feel simultaneously similar and different to us this time around.

Usually, New Moons are about setting new intentions and creating new beginnings for ourselves in our world. This is true today as well. With an added capacity to know that many things must end as well, for new growth to come through.

Photo by Juan Gomez on Unsplash

Changing Scenery - Effort, Delight & Unknowability

In my world, this has taken the shape of revisiting everyday things, situations and processes and re-working this idea of ‘my’ way of living and doing things.

What came up was that I have a certain way of doing things, which is neither good nor bad. Some of them were actually amazing. Others though, became my way because of something heavy or painful in my past that I was determined to overcome. But that something no longer needed to be - it was no longer a story and narrative I identified with. When I sat with this in a practice of loving awareness, they melted at their root.
Now, I experience some unsurety (in a good way) and some openness to possibility around how I show up daily and live out aspects of my day and life.

Something old that didn’t serve had to leave, for something new to be birthed. I cannot see or feel into what that ‘new thing’ is. It is unknown to me right now, so there is an exciting scariness to it all.

The other old things and practices that are still with me, have a formidable beautiful foundational strength to them. This felt like admiring the trunk of the oldest tree in the orchard - one that has weathered hundreds of storms and borne fruit through a hundred cycles of life.

On the outside, I’m not sure it looks very different. But on the inside, that fullness of Taurus - the work, the effort, the delight, the things beyond control and the unknown - are held together simultaneously.

Sense of self and self-worth come up often in association with Taurus energy. This could mean jobs, income and money; it could mean how we feel about ourselves, our confidence, skills and abilities; it may also mean our bodies, our resources and our experiences. How some or all of these come together informs us, consciously or unconsciously in our choices.

For example, If you suffer from the burdens of self-doubt, it may be difficult to make a sudden job change, just because an opportunity presented itself. Alternatively, if you live with joyful trust in yourself, then you may be willing to do things far beyond your comfort zone, if it aligned with your goals and desires. So, this energy is about how we interpret risk as well, since the unknown nature of things features here.

Photo by Marcus Dall Col on Unsplash

We may know ourselves to be risk averse. Often because we do not trust change, nor our ability to meet it. We actually fear it.

The energy of this week comes in strongly to remind us that the fear and mistrust of change in our external world reflects where we are internally as well.

Since you and I are residents of a universe where change is constant, whether we acknowledge it or not, we ARE that change as well.

Our cells, our hair follicles, our mood, our digestion, our day, our world, our people, the plants and animals, the seasons and weather, political tides - all of it, is in constant change.

What has been need not always be. - The Witcher

What Has Been Need Not Always Be

Change may have been scary, but a new perspective comes to us this week around it.

Because now, if we have been plagued by our lesser nature in the past - our self-doubt, lack of worth, low self-trust and the likes. We now have planetary support, reminding us that what has been, does not necessarily need to be any longer.

Those patterns can end.
And if they are coming up for us louder and stronger than they ever before, it may be because we are being pushed into the driver’s seat of our own life experiences.

These patterns can be harder and tougher if massive emotions and stories from our past are being dredged up. But, in this unpleasant and exhausting experience, we are growing our new Self, our new Life, our new orchard.
This is the work and the effort of this time.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

We can also res, in the knowing that our work effort comes with blissful delight. Whereas in the past, we may have felt our hard inner work didn’t yield desired fruit, this isn’t essentially the case now.

This work effort, by its nature also changes the orientation of our desires and can releases us from the prison of our past judgements, comparisons and expectations. This allows deep reverence of what is present for us right now - regardless of whether it is desirable or not per our preference. A simple wonderment in accepting what is in front of us washes over us, and that itself feels like a win!

This acceptance and reverence allows the fruits of our labour to yield organically, naturally and abundantly, not only for us, but also for our world. Because fruit from orchards nourish many, not just a select few.
In a way, though the work and effort is ours, we may feel the joy of this beyond our just our daily lives, and in the quality of experiences and interactions with the world.

None of this is possible without constantly letting go of our control-addictions and need to plan and contrive everything. This is needed to make room for unknowable mystery to meet us in it’s surprising glory.

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash

If you have known yourself as weak, inadequate, controlling or small; if you have felt rage against the world or certain people for making you feel this way, or if you have felt guilt in keeping others small; if you are consumed with dread and grief over your life and the where the world is going…. in this now-time, YOU get to be the difference.

These late degrees of the Moon in Taurus ask us how much of our past is present for us today.

Are we doing the work in our orchard today when the sun is out?
Or, are we sitting and thinking about all the past years of work we did, feeling exhausted and defeated by it, letting our life and day pass without us?

The more of our past unresolved baggage we bring, the more we abandon our present and our future. The outcome of that is inconsolable isolation as we walk in an empty shell of ourselves.

A lot of us know this, for we have been there.

As resident-children of this planet in this universe, change is our native-language. Our bodies know it. Our souls know it. Even our consciousness knows it.

And now, the stories of laziness, smallness, invisibleness, exhaustion, draining rage and dreadful apathy that we have kept writing for ourselves, will, like the universe itself, change. Because these stories live in us, and we live on a changing planet, in an evolving universe.

The orchards of our Life, like fruit-orchards are not static pieces of creation. They are, unto themselves a scenery of constant change, above and below the soil. Sometimes we see and feel the change and other times we don’t.

This time, we are that.